Fifty Per Cent Prophet Part 3

He went up the stairs to the office directly over the one he had a.s.signed to Forsythe and stepped in quietly. Two men were relaxed in lounge chairs, their eyes closed.

_Mes.h.i.+ng?_ Taggert asked wordlessly.

_Mes.h.i.+ng._

Taggert closed the door carefully and went into his own office.

General Howard Layton, USSF, looked no different from any other s.p.a.ce Force officer, except that he was rather handsomer than most. He looked as though he might have posed for recruiting posters at one time, and, in point of fact, he had--back when he had been an ensign in the United States Navy's Submarine Service. He was forty-nine and looked a prematurely graying thirty.

He stood in the observation bunker at the landing area of St. Thomas s.p.a.cefield and watched through the periscope as a heavy rocket settled itself to the surface of the landing area. The blue-white tongue of flame touched the surface and splattered; then the heavy s.h.i.+p settled slowly down over it, as though it were sliding down a column of light.

The column of light shortened--

And abruptly vanished as the s.h.i.+p touched down.

General Layton took his eyes away from the periscope. "Another one back safely. Thank G.o.d."

Nearby, the only other man in that room of the bunker, a rather short civilian, had been watching the same scene on a closed-circuit TV screen. He smiled up at the general. "How many loads does that make, so far?"

"Five. We'll have the job done before the deadline time."

"Were you worried?"

"A little. I still am, to be honest. What if nothing happens at the end of sixty days? The President isn't one of us, and he's only gone along with the Society's recommendations so far because we've been able to produce results. But"--he gestured outside, indicating the newly-landed s.h.i.+p--"all this extra expense isn't going to set well with him if we goof this once."

"I know," said the civilian. "But have you ever known Brian Taggert to be wrong?"

General Layton grinned. "No. And in a lesser man, that sort of omniscience could be infernally irritating. How is he progressing with Forsythe?"

The civilian frowned. "We've got plenty of data so far, and the method seems to be working well, but we don't have enough to theorize yet.

"Forsythe just sits in his office and gives 'readings,' or whatever you want to call them, to the subjects who come in. _The Metaphysicist_ has been running an ad asking for volunteers, so we have all kinds of people calling up for appointments. Forsythe is as happy as a kid."

"How about his predictions?"

"Donna Tedesco is running data processing on them. She's in constant mental contact with him. So are Hughes and Matson, in the office above. The three of them are meshed together with each other--don't ask me how; I'm no telepath--and they're getting a pretty good idea of what's going on in Forsythe's mind.

"Every once in a while, he gets a real flash of something, and it apparently comes pretty fast. The team is trying to a.n.a.lyze the fine-grain structure of the process now.

"The rest of the time, he simply gives out with the old guff that phony crystal-ball gazers have been giving out for centuries. Even when he gets a real flash, he piles on a lot of intuitive extrapolation. And the farther he gets from that central flash, the less reliable the predictions are."

"Do you think we'll get theory and symbology worked out before that meteor is supposed to hit Moonbase One?" asked the general.

The civilian shrugged. "Who knows? We'll have to take a lot on faith if we do, because there won't be enough time to check all his predictions. Each subject is being given a report sheet with his forecast on it, and he's supposed to check the accuracy of it as it happens. And our agents are making spot checks on them just to make sure. It'll take time. All we can do is hope."

"I suppose." General Layton took a quick look through the periscope again. The s.h.i.+p's air lock still hadn't opened; the air and ground were still too hot. He looked back at the civilian. "What about the espionage reports?"

The civilian tapped his briefcase. "I can give it to you in a capsule, verbally. You can look these over later."

"Shoot."

"The Soviets are getting worried, to put it bluntly. We can't hide those rockets, you know. Their own Luna-based radar has been picking up every one of them as they come in and leave. They're wondering why we're making so many trips all of a sudden."

"Have they done any theorizing?" the general asked worriedly.

"They have." The civilian chuckled sardonically. "They've decided we're trying for another Mars shot--a big one, this time."

The general exhaled sharply. "That's too close for comfort. How do they figure?"

"They figure we're ama.s.sing material at Moonbase One. They figure we intend to build the s.h.i.+p there, with the loads of stuff that we're sending up in the rockets."

"_What?_" General Layton opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he began to laugh.

The civilian joined him.

Donna Tedesco pushed the papers across Brian Taggert's desk. "Check them yourself, Brian. I've gone over them six ways from Septuagesima, and I still can't see any other answer."

Taggert frowned at the papers and tapped them with a thoughtful finger, but he didn't pick them up. "I'll take your word for it, Donna. At least for right now. If we get completely balled up, we'll go over them together."

"If you ask me, we've already completely balled up."

"You think it's that bad?"

She looked at him pleadingly. "Can you think of any other explanation?"

"Not just yet," Brian Taggert admitted.

"Nor can I. There it is. Every single one of his valid predictions, every single one of his precognitive intuitions--_without exception_--has been based on the actions of human beings. He can predict stock market fluctuations, and family squabbles, and South American election results. His disaster predictions, every one of them, were due to _human_ error, _human_ failure--not Acts of G.o.d. He failed to predict the earthquake in Los Angeles; he missed the flood in the Yangtze Valley; he knew nothing of the eruption of Stromboli.

All of these were disasters that took human lives in the past three weeks, and he missed every one of them. And yet, he managed to get nearly every major s.h.i.+p, airplane, and even automobile accident connected with his subjects.

"Seven of his subjects had relatives or friends who were hurt or killed in the earthquake-flood-eruption sequence, but he didn't see them. Yet he could pick up such small things as a nephew of one of the men getting a bad scald on his arm.

"In the face of that, how can we rely on his one prediction about a meteor striking Moonbase One?"

Taggert rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "I don't know," he said slowly. "There must be a connection somehow."

"Oh, Brian, Brian!" Her eyes were glistening with as yet unshed tears.

"I've never seen you go off on a wild tangent like this before! On the word of an old fraud like Forsythe, a man who lies about half the time, you talk the Administration into sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into the biggest s.p.a.ce lift in history!

"Oh, sure; I know. The old fraud is convinced he was telling the truth. But were you tapping his mind when the prediction flash came?

No! Was anyone? No! And he's perfectly capable of lying to himself, and you know it!

"And what will happen if it doesn't come off? We're past the first deadline already. If that meteor doesn't hit within the next twenty-eight days, the Society will be right back where it was ten years ago! Or worse!

"And all because you trusted the word of Mr. Phony-Doctor Forsythe!"